For Pete’s Sake, Just Wash Your Hands

Lysol is not something you want to be spraying around your home or office. There are much better ways to avoid catching influenza.

A few days ago, I went to my bank to deposit some money into my account. When I walked up to the teller, I noticed that her face was extremely inflamed and she looked uncomfortable. I asked her if she was okay, and she apologized. She said, “Oh, I’m sorry but I seem to be having an allergic reaction to something.” I asked the bank teller if she knew what might have caused it. She said she wasn’t sure but that she thought it might be related to the Lysol they had been spraying around the office that morning. “With all the people coming down with the flu, we’ve been trying to disinfect everything,” she said.

I offered some empathy. “Yes, it does seem like an awful lot of people are getting sick lately.”1But Lysol? I remembered reading once how toxic Lysol was and how it should be avoided as a household cleaning product. The U.S. government classifies Lysol as a pesticide.23“Ah no, though,” I told the teller, “stay away from that stuff.”

In 2011, the Daily Beast included Lysol disinfectant spray in its list of “most toxic home-cleaning products.” The publication noted ethyl alcohol, carbon dioxide, and triethanolamine as the “potentially harmful ingredients” in the product and that they were “suspected of causing cancer, developmental toxicity, reproductive toxicity, respiratory toxicity.”5Reproductive toxicity? Apparently, during the first half of the 20th century douching with Lysol was a form of female contraception.7

By 1940, the commercial douche had become the most popular birth control method in the country, favored by women of all classes. It would remain the leading female contraceptive until 1960, when a breakthrough technology—oral contraceptives—knocked it off its lofty pedestal. An inexpensive alternative to male and medical methods, the antiseptic douche was ineffective, even dangerous. Scores of douching preparations, though advertised as modern medical miracles, contained nothing more than water, cosmetic plant extracts, and table salt. On the other hand, many others, including the most popular brand, Lysol disinfectant, were soap solutions containing cresol (a constituent of crude carbolic acid, a distillate of coal and wood), which, when used in too high a concentration cause severe inflammation, burning, and even death.8

The active ingredient in Lysol is benzalkonium chloride910(also known as alkyldimethylbenzylammonium chloride1112). Well, it turns out that benzalkonium chloride can produce allergic reactions such as a “rash; hives; itching; red, swollen, blistered, or peeling skin with or without fever; wheezing; tightness in the chest or throat; trouble breathing, swallowing, or talking; unusual hoarseness; or swelling of the mouth, face, lips, tongue, or throat.”13 So that might explain my bank teller’s bright red face.

Lysol is not something you want to be spraying around your home or office. There are much better ways to avoid catching influenza. Here are a few of them, as recommended by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC):

Wash your hands frequently.

Avoid close contact with those who are sick. If you are sick, stay home.

A side note. Benzalkonium chloride has been used as a preservative in some vaccines, according to an article by the Weston A. Price Foundation.1516The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states that benzalkonium chloride is currently used in one vaccine that it has approved—the anthrax vaccine BioThrax, produced by Emergent BioDefense Corp.1718The side effects of ingesting benzalkonium chloride include respiratory depression, central nervous system depression, mucous membrane erosion, gastrointestinal erosion, urinary system reactions, convulsions, seizures, paralysis, coma, and death.151920There has apparently been no testing done to determine the safety of injecting benzalkonium chloride into humans.15

There have been reports of accidental injections of benzalkonium chloride into humans. In one case, a male nurse attempted suicide by injecting himself with benzalkonium chloride. The individual was ultimately treated for acute respiratory distress syndrome and survived.21 In another case, a dental patient was accidentally injected with benzalkonium chloride instead of a local anesthetic while having her tooth extracted. The patient developed “chin and neck swelling led to dyspnea” and she “lost consciousness.”22

7 Responses to "For Pete’s Sake, Just Wash Your Hands"

Adrienne Rubino February 16, 2018 at 6:34 am

I am very Disappointed in Web page for not having article about the safety of this years flu vaccine! You are ignoring it! We should be testing this vaccine that it is not carrying a live virus. How many people know this vaccine is carrying five different virus strains in one? Is the formaldehyde doing it’s job to kill the live virus. Why don’t they say whether the people that die have had the flu vaccine or not! Why are we so quite on this web page when we should be outraged over the murder of all these victims that have died. This is the same as as the Salk vaccine of years ago!

“I am very Disappointed in Web page for not having article about the safety of this years flu vaccine!”? Anyone that gets a flu shot is either uninformed, misinformed, os just plain stupid! Why test something that does NOT work?

I read an interesting thread in a diary about getting the vaccine, one among many that suggested that “herd immunity” requires one to get the flu shot.
There were actually people reporting that they had indeed gotten the shot and yet got very sick with the flu, but those reports were ignored, or they were informed that they probably didn’t really have the flu.
Sigh. Someone else reported a horrible reaction to the flu vaccine more than once! And yet felt compelled to still get the shot (until this last episode)
Wow.

I am a trustee and board member of the Foundation for the Advancement in Cancer Therapies. Our mandate is helping people avoid illness, and heal themselves. We have found that a strong immune system, based on good nutrition and elimination of toxins is a far better disease preventative than vaccines, or other pharmaceutical products. And yes, many vaccines, because they are cultured in animal tissue, may contain retroviruses, like the xenotropic murine (mouse-related) leukemia virus-related virus (XMLX) associated with chronic fatigue syndrome, and some cancers. Read the book Plague, by Dr. Judy Mikovits PhD and Kent Heckenlively. It will blow your mind.